Marko Milosevic, the thuggish son of the deposed Yugoslav president, was desperately seeking sanctuary last night after China refused entry to him, his wife and baby son. Arriving at Beijing airport, they were told to turn round and fly back out.
Marko, his wife Zorica and their child, also called Marko, were believed to have landed in Moscow on an Aeroflot flight from Beijing last night. At Sheremetyevo airport, a Mercedes with diplomatic licence plates waited to ferry them away, but two hours after the plane landed there was no sign of the family.
An official from the Russian border guards service said that the group would be allowed to stay if they so requested. The border guards, he said, "have not been given any concrete order on how to deal with the son of the former Yugoslav president. It will all depend on Marko Milosevic himself."
The family first arrived in Russia without visas at the weekend, before flying on to China. Marko's uncle, Borislav Milosevic - the Yugoslav ambassador in Russia - is thought to have smoothed out the formalities. Marko was apparently using a diplomatic passport.
At 11pm on Sunday, Aeroflot flight 571 to Beijing from Moscow took off - carrying "diplomat M Milosevic", airline officials confirmed - and arrived in the Chinese capital at about 10.30am local time yesterday.
The Chinese authorities refused the family entry without visas, and they returned to Moscow on Aeroflot flight 572.
According to reports from Belgrade, Marko was accompanied by Rade Markovic, the former chief of state security, a linchpin of the former Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
China strongly supported the former Yugoslav president until he was toppled last week; Nato's blunder in bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year, during its raids on Serbia, strengthened these ties. But it has recognised President Vojislav Kostunica.
There have been several recent reports suggesting that Beijing was helping the Milosevic clique to salt away a stolen fortune. Mladjan Dinkic, Mr Kostunica's economics adviser, said that a Beijing-bound plane left Belgrade last Friday, possibly carrying more than £100m worth of Yugoslavia's gold reserves. China denied this.
A key figure in the Milosevic clique, the banker Borka Vucic, is reported to have made several trips to Beijing this year. She is the head of Serbia's biggest bank, Beobanka, a post once held by Slobodan Milosevic. For the past decade the bank has been the Yugoslav leader's key instrument in stripping his country's assets and transferring them abroad.